:Information Law and Policy Spring 10

Facebook has done a poor job of helping its users control their privacy. What started off as a service where most user activity was private has gradually evolved into a service where almost everything users do is public. What makes this worse from a consumer protection perspective is that in most cases Facebook has just changed the default access levels themselves without permission from users.

Here is a great infographic which illustrates the evolution of privacy on Facebook over the years. Privacy controls on Facebook are a mess. Even the most technically advanced users can’t always understand what the settings mean. They need something like this to help users decide how their activity is shared with the world. But, it’s unlikely that Facebook is going to make it any easier for their users to control their privacy given that it does not make business sense.

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